Yahoo.com: Ball Don't Lie (Dan Devine) —The Trump SoHo hotel is seen in New York, Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016. Last season, the Cleveland Cavaliers made other arrangements for players who did not want to stay at a New York hotel branded by President-elect Donald Trump. (AP) The holding company for all the business ventures of President Donald J. Trump announced on Wednesday that it had reached a deal to “exit” the faltering ...

Yahoo.com: Ball Don't Lie (Dan Devine) —For the second straight season, Derrick Rose has reportedly left his team in the middle of the season without getting clearance to do so. (AP) Derrick Rose is reportedly “evaluating his future” in professional basketball after leaving his team in the middle of the season for the second straight campaign. [ Now’s the time to sign up for Fantasy Basketball! Join for free ] ESPN’s Adrian...

Yahoo.com: Ball Don't Lie (Dan Devine) —Jeff Hornacek prepares to unleash a string of expletives more foul than any Courtney Lee has ever heard. (AP) Through two quarters on Wednesday night, the New York Knicks had looked like they were just counting down the hours until Thanksgiving dinner. They’d allowed the Toronto Raptors to score 59 points, shooting 50 percent from the floor and 10-for-23 from 3-point land as a team, with...

Yahoo.com: Ball Don't Lie (Dan Devine) —Blake Griffin looks up at the spot he and the Clippers used to occupy in the standings. (Getty) Three weeks ago, things were going well for the Los Angeles Clippers. Sure, they’d just gotten blasted yet again by the Golden State Warriors, but that was a brief bummer in an otherwise sunny start to the 2017-18 NBA season. They had won their first four games behind a cranked-up defense and ...

Yahoo.com: Ball Don't Lie (Jackie Bamberger) —Joel Embiid is a star on the court and on social media. Welcome to “NBA litness test,” a Yahoo Sports feature, wherein we review the week in NBA on and off court action to determine which the degree to which events are, and aren’t, lit. It’s that simple. Joel Embiid: Troll God The alternate name for this feature is “Joel Embiid’s Week in Review.” Let’s take it back to Wednesday...

Yahoo.com: Ball Don't Lie (Ben Rohrbach) —Kevin Durant is pretty certain the Thunder will raise his No. 35 to the rafters one day. (AP) Headlines from the first month of the NBA season were dominated by the struggles of LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers, the rise of Kyrie Irving’s Boston Celtics and unicorn -y MVP candidacies from New York Knicks phenom Kristaps Porzingis and Milwaukee Bucks sensation Giannis Antetokounmpo, so...

Yahoo.com: Ball Don't Lie (Dan Devine) —Mike Conley’s going to be sitting down for a while. (Getty) Whatever other issues have roiled around the Memphis Grizzlies over the last several seasons — the structural issues and self-imposed ceiling that comes with a defense-first, shooting-deficient roster, the aging of talismen Zach Randolph and Tony Allen, three different head coaches and approaches since 2012 — the franchise could...

Yahoo.com: Ball Don't Lie (Dan Devine) —Kevin Durant takes the torch. (AP) You just knew, as soon as it went up, that it would wind up playing over and over on highlight reels throughout history. It was a shot for the ages, a journey trapped in amber: Kevin Durant pulling the ball off the rim after a missed left corner 3-pointer by Kyle Korver, a shot the all-time marksman was convinced was good when it left his hand, then...

Yahoo.com: Ball Don't Lie (Ben Rohrbach) —The Sacramento Kings — the franchise that hasn’t won more than 33 games for a decade and hasn’t reached the playoffs since Corliss Williamson was still on the roster — are still not good at basketball. There is hope, to be sure, that will change someday. The Kings feature a cache of recent first-round picks, from lightning-quick point guard De’Aaron Fox to sweet-shooting wing Buddy Hield and...

Yahoo.com: Ball Don't Lie (Dan Devine) —Joel Embiid earned plenty of praise for his utter dismantling of DeAndre Jordan, Willie Reed a.k.a. What’s His Name and the Los Angeles Clippers on Monday night. As it turned out, though, JoJo was just getting warmed up for what would be his real Staples Center showcase — and the surest sign yet that the Philadelphia 76ers, young and odd and all of a sudden as they feel — are very real,...

Yahoo.com: Ball Don't Lie (Dan Devine) —Ben Simmons, Jayson Tatum and Lonzo Ball have been three of the most closely watched members of this year’s rookie class. (Yahoo Sports illustration) We’re now a month into the 2017-18 NBA season, and into the careers of a new class of NBA rookies. Let’s check in on the freshmen in the first installment of Rookie Redraft , a semi-regular look at which first-year players would earn top-10...

Yahoo.com: Ball Don't Lie (DJ Dunson) —Iman Shumpert is further blurring the lines between entertainment and the NBA Iman Shumpert’s star has fallen significantly since the nascent years of his career when the New York Knicks were convinced he had All-Star potential. Now in Cleveland, his role on the Cavaliers is dwindling, but his star off the court is growing. If you’re pining for more of Shumpert, you’re more likely to...

Yahoo.com: Ball Don't Lie (Ben Rohrbach) —LeBron James flexes his considerable muscle. (Getty Images) We’re not five hours removed from LeBron James declaring himself the “ King of New York ” following a true superstar turn during a Cleveland Cavaliers comeback win in Madison Square Garden on Monday, seemingly putting a drama-filled past few weeks behind him. The team meeting . The finger-pointing . The cryptic social media...

Yahoo.com: Ball Don't Lie (Dan Devine) —LeBron James stares down the crowd at Madison Square Garden after dropping the dagger that slayed the Knicks on Monday. (Getty) LeBron James put a period at the end of another entertaining bit of New York City drama on Monday night when he dropped a dagger 3-pointer right in the eye of Manhattan marvel Kristaps Porzingis to cap a 23-point second-half comeback. The morning after leading...

Yahoo.com: Ball Don't Lie (Dan Devine) —LeBron James rises to a place Kristaps Porzingis can’t quite reach yet. (AP) Kristaps Porzingis is the toast of New York these days, a superstar on the ascent racking up 30 points per game and unending hymns of praise for his work in making the New York Knicks — the long woeful, moribund and miserable Knicks, a franchise whose catastrophic scandals-to-playoff series wins ratio since 2000...